Tag Archives: retreat

As I promised last week, here are the goodies from the Knitting Pipeline retreat! I have included links to the vendors (ok, I’m enabling you) so you can check them out. Now to try to go through these in a semi organized fashion.

Oh, bags. People keep telling me I have a bag problem. I can’t help it!

Upper left – teal and white circles – I bought the bag at a LYS booth (it was a retreat sponsor) but the bag was actually made by Trappings and Trinkets (available on Etsy). I actually squeeled when I unzipped the bag because the interior fabric was so cute (teal, pink and white kitties). If you want a peak, take a look at my instagram feed!

Upper right – arctic animals on a gray background – this bag is from Fat Squirrel Fibers. She actually made a bag specifically for the retreat but I loved the animals on this one even more (see the little narwhal?). The bags are nicely made and she picks out fabrics that are fun but not necessarily loud and crazy.

Lower right – these two little notion pouches are from RainStorm Studios. I toss them in my project bags that don’t have pockets. I really like the one on the right because it has a circle base but opens up wide enough you can include a pair of small scissors in there. Very functional for me.

Lower left – this is the gauge ruler from Ann Budd knits. KnitCircus carries them and they’re all of $5. You line up the stitch symbols on the ruler with your stitches such that the with of your stitches matches the symbols. Whichever set of symbols it lines up with tells you your gauge (not the most elegant description).

Oh, the yarn! If you saw my post about found patterns you know I went into the vendor market with some projects in mind. So I can happily say I did buy most yarn with a project in mind.

Upper left green and purple skeins – The slightly variegated green skein is Strong Stock (80/20 merino/nylon) from Another Crafty Girl in the colorway Numerical Vampire. The purple next to it is Tenacious Sock (75/15/10 merino/nylon/tencel) from Dyeabolical Yarns in the colorway Ever After. I plan to use these in a two-color shawl together.

Upper center gold and black skeins – Both of these are from Sun Valley Fibers in the merino/cashmere/nylon fingering base. The two colors are called Golden Harvest and Onyx. I also plan to use these in a two-color shawl (see a trend yet?).

Upper center gray variegated skeins – These are from Yarn Geek Fibers in her Rocketeer (merino/cashmere/nylon) base in the To Boldly Go colorway. Yes, a Star Trek reference. This yarn is super soft and squishy. So squishy I can’t describe. This doesn’t have a project planned for it – maybe a cowl? a shawl? There’s a lot of yardage (962 yards of fingering) so maybe a shawl? Still can’t decide.

Top right dark green skeins – These are included in our Knitting Pipeline bag from Quince and Co. 100 grams (total) of fingering weight wool. I think these are going to be boot toppers.

Lower left red and black skeins – Both of these are from Leading Men Fiber Arts in the Box Office base (100% worsted weight merino). The colors are called Poison Apple and Darkest Hour. These are going to be a Themisto Hat and there might be enough left over for wristers or boot toppers.

Bottom left green skein – Also from Leading Men Fiber Arts – this is the Diva base, 150 grams of 80/20 merino/silk. The colorway is Envy. Definitely going to be a lace shawl. I love the extra yardage – its great for shawls!

Lower right – black and blue skeins – All three of these are Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet (90/10 merino/nylon), which is squishy soft. One of the blacks and the blue are going together for something brioche. I got the second black to have as an extra because I frequently pair colorful yarns with black.

I’m back from the Knitting Pipeline retreat in central Illinois and have so many fun things to share with you. As usual, there will be one blog post about the retreat and another about the goodies I picked up. I went with my friend Patty and we made a four-day weekend out of it. Yeah, we don’t pack light.

The retreat actually started Friday afternoon but there were some optional activities before. We drove over Thursday morning and had lunch before taking a class Thursday afternoon, which was held at a local yarn shop in Morton, IL. The class was Beginning Brioche with Amy Detjen (you can see her patterns here). Now I’ve tried to knit brioche before via a book and YouTube but it just didn’t click. This class made it click. To learn Brioche we started knitting Amy’s Chromatic cowl, and I bought one of her kits of yarn (a 50 gram gradient ball and a 50 gram solid). I almost picked a red/gray combo but ultimately decided on the rainbow and cream. Fun, right? I made good progress but ripped it out later that night to restart on smaller needles.

After class we went to our hotel in Peoria and then to dinner at Granite City. I loved that the restaurant was right down along the river and we could watch the sun set over the river.

The next morning we went to our second class with Amy Detjen, which was essentially the “part 2.” We learned a brioche cast on, and then did increases and decreases. Not sure I have those nailed quite yet but I guess I will need to figure out the decreases if I want to knit a brioche hat. After lunch the retreat started!

I made some wonderful new friends at my table and some new friends from other tables. There were some free break-out sessions during the retreat, although I did not attend. Saturday afternoon there was a vendor market with a lot of indie makers (more on those goodies in the next post). We had a little more knitting time before the retreat wrapped up and we had to say goodbye.

After the retreat we headed down to Springfield Illinois to stay the night with my aunt. We had dinner, some wine and some “show and tell” before wandering off to bed. Sunday morning Patty and I went to have breakfast with Kristi of the In a sKnit podcast before heading back to Indiana. Stay tuned for next week’s post on the amazing goodies I got, complete with links for enabling.